The lady doth protest too much, methinks

Hey, I’m April. This is my side space where I mostly reblog and keep things low-key. I do my best with tags, and I appreciate your patience if I’m slow to reply. Thanks for being here. I’m off to get some fresh air for a bit. 30 | she/her

[pokegyns]

radblr hot takes? 🔥

what nuanced take do you feel easily shamed for on radblr?

[feministnova]

fatphobia is a real form of structural oppression that men suffer from too. obviously it is worse for women, as is the case with other intersecting axes of oppression, but that does not mean men do not experience it.

[unsentimentaltranslator]

The problem is that fat men as a class at best don’t care about fat women and at worst are viciously misogynistic + fatphobic and use their own fatness to justify it. I’ve dealt with structural medical fatphobia + misogyny and the fatphobia definitely made it worse, but fat men aren’t calling that out; they’re sitting around calling Lizzo a Bad Fatty because she doesn’t hate herself.

[spookyradluka]

It’s not feminist’s responsibility to center male on male crime at all, actually

Figure your shit out, feminism is for women’s liberation not the World Mommy Movement

[belleschippedcup]

“not the World Mommy Movement” I’m crying because that’s what non feminists/liberal “feminists” think feminism is about

[298320482349204821999]

so much kink shit is just men trying to justify their desire to hurt women and pretend like they can go into a room, hurt someone, get off to hurting someone, and then walk out as if that doesn’t mean anything about who they are as a person

[enchantingcheesecakepersona]

Why is the bedroom seen as an alternative reality that won’t actually affect someone’s physical and mental health taking damage ? It’s not a game where your partner will respawn if you strangle her to death

[vensuera]

Man what happened to sensation play. Texture play. Food play. 🥲. It seems to be just abuse play and that’s nothing to play about period.

[a-griffin-in-the-clouds]

Males came in and put their boots on the table, made it about control and conquest, and called it kink so they wouldn’t have to look at the violence of it.

[ladyinaradiator]

”i’m just a girl.”

No, actually, you’re an adult woman who’s intelligent, capable, powerful and has a fully functioning brain that is way too old to be likening itsself to a child. Grow the fuck up. You make mistakes because you’re human and not an innocent child.

[radicalcoffeeclub]

Insane how ladies will be like omg i cant have bush its too overstimulating but ill have my long hair in my face all day like girl your bush is in your pants wym its overstimulating but ur inch long fake lashes arent...... again yeah that post that said women will have mysterious sensory issues that perfectly align with beauty standards expected of them

[pokegyns]

radblr hot takes? 🔥

what nuanced take do you feel easily shamed for on radblr?

[drbased]

(putting points I've not seen in the reblogs)

Radblr cares way too much about 'collecting' instances of tims being shitty/predatory. As you can imagine, most of said instances are from right-wing publications. And yet another daily mail article of some guy in a woman's changing room doesn't add to the discussion at all.

Radblr low-key thinks of itself as better than those liberal snowflake sjws with their trigger warnings. As a result, since joining radblr I have seen some traumatising shit shared with no warning (the images of women after acid attacks comes to mind. Deliberately sharing traumatising violent imagery to already traumatised women is just crabs in the bucket shit - same with the point above.

Radblr is, at the very least, centrist in nature and low-key reactionary, often emphasising that what's bad about transactivists, poly people, bdsmers etc. is how cringe, ugly and weird they are.

Radblr has a borderline spiritual belief surrounding sex and love, making sweeping statements about both as if we could ever possibly know that casual sex is universally bad, or you're only supposed to love one person at a time. They'll cite hookup culture's damage to women as some sort of 'proof' that casual sex/polyamory is a uniquely patriarchal invention and therefore damaging the pure, monogamous sex we should be having (well, unless you're heterosexual, in which case you shouldn't be having sex at all) - despite the fact that monogamy has also been very much utilised by patriarchy!

Radblr's single-issue nature places it in a bubble where members are low-key discouraged from engaging with any leftism outside it. Therefore, most radblr members are very quick to tar all leftism with the same brush whilst not knowing even the most basic of right-wing dogwhistles. Leftists get insulted way too much on radblr, and whilst I understand this is done out of frustration/betryal, radblr members are way too keen to boast about how they are super normal and can get along with everyone, and would rather hang out with their 'normie' conservative relatives than the strawman sex-positive transactivists which, as according to my point above, are always painted as cringe, ugly and weird.

Radblr is ableist as fuck, once again keen to boast about just how normal we are and making fun of people for things like 'not being able to answer the phone'. Radblr places itself in a bubble where we never have to be challenged, and then brag about how much more mature we are than those mentally ill freaks who can't hold down a job. Because radblr's fiscally centrist mentality also has this weird obsession with jobs being some metric of what a normal healthy person you are and also what a good feminist you are. I'm constantly on the lookout for radfems who are willing to criticise both the tradwife phenomenon and also recognise that those tradwifes aren't stupid, pathetic and lazy - because maybe they're women who recognise the evils of work under capitalism and have tried to escape that with the only avenue they know.

I'm so glad I was a libfem first because only in the classic 'sjw' spaces have I found a greater dedication to mental health awareness, intersectional politics and actual leftist critique. I try to bring my actual leftism into this space, and I'm so, so appreciative of OP for changing the nature of the space much faster and more effectively than I ever could.

[inukradfem]

I know this is old and although I don’t agree with you about everything I do agree with you about the ableism and the single issue, one track mind radblr and even feminist activists in real life have. The obsession with trans people really does go overboard sometimes. Some radfems would rather align with a man who thinks women should be kept in cages and only used for breeding than they would with a woman who likes having one night stands.

[pokegyns]

radblr hot takes? 🔥

what nuanced take do you feel easily shamed for on radblr?

[dramaticbucket]

Radblr has a giant western bias that they don't even try to work past. Obviously if the majority of this space is populated by western people then they will discuss those more. But I've seen far too many people paint all problems with their own brush without bothering to listen to other voices and it is frustrating. As an Indian woman, I relate far more with my Japanese friends than I do with almost any woman in the west and there's a reason for that. But if I talk about an issue affecting asian women on radblr, I am inundated with solutions that simply will not work India and the only other response is "then make it work" because of the assumption that the western way of life is inherently better.

There's also an issue with them caring more about how lives of the women in the west will be affected than about how women in the east are currently living. Far too many times I've been told to not criticize Indian men or culture because that could impact immigration or the lives of Indian women living in the west and I really hate that I'm being told basically to shut up because my problems being stuck in a misogynistic country are considered less important than a person who has the opportunity to leave. Absolutely no empathy whatsoever for anyone who isn't living in the "Global North". Just plain condescension.

Basically, radblr has a racism issue.

[radragefem]

YES, same here as a north africain woman, I'm told not to talk about my misogynistic culture, not to criticize the veil because there's Islamophobia on the other side of the Mediterranean. Okay, I don't deny it, but here THERE IS NO ISLAMOPHOBIA. Why should I act based on a reality that IS NOT MY OWN?

[sisterofrage]

Also, not criticizing misogynistic aspects of a culture isn't going to stop the people who already have a racist hatred of those people. Trust that racists give no shits about women, and merely use that as an excuse to cover their already existing racism. Stop criticizing the veil, for example, and they'll just move to some other talking point. They do not care.

[quinntheestallion]

I think by including racially diverse characters with ethnic names in a children's book, JKR was trying to prevent y'all from becoming the kind of adults who make casually racist jokes and point and laugh at real life people's names when they come from a different cultural background than you. Somehow, y'all managed to become those adults anyway while accusing her of the racism you all now openly practice with no remorse. Here is a white male openly mocking a real-life black woman's name and calling the name her black parents gave her "racist". Incredible.

[redstatefeminist666-deactivated]

Dean Thomas

Lee Morgan

Seraphina Picquery

Celestina Warbeck

Leta Lestrange

Also a major difference between "Cho Chang" and "Ching Chong" is that it's fucking not that.

Stop using HP's quirky character names to hide the fact that you want to make fun of someone's real name.

[flowerlygirls]

they are literally simply making fun of a black womans name. they think theyre being so subversive but that is a real person and theyre just making fun of a name typically associated with specific racial or ethnic groups. how do they not grasp that??

same thing they said about luigi mangione's name. they might as well be the comically racist characters in some stupid comedy that refer to any asian character as "lee" or "chang" and make a joke about how they all have the same name and look the same.

it also feels like its another example of precisely american (or generally native-english-speakers') ignorance. you dont think about how "brad" and "jack" and "april" are stereotypical white-people english names in precisely the same way. its just that every other country seems to be aware that the names most common in their country are their normal names, but to everyone else "THAT stereotypical name from THAT country". the italians are aware that luigi is just another name in their country, but for you americans its THAT italian guy name.

theyre the default. so it never occurred to them to say "omg KYLE JEFFERSON ahaha lol jk rowling naming an american character ass name!😂" bc your english names are just normal names!

it also has not been lost on my that i havent yet seen anyone do this to people (and their names) that they perceive as "just as white" as themselves. they do it to a black woman, to an italian man, to a chinese woman..... how many have you seen of these going "omg this german actors name is reinhard berger?! jk rowling naming characters ass name😂" . obv it could have happened and i just havent seen it, just feel like theres a pattern there. especially since the twitter OP's name is Nikolaj, a name that is also rather "stereotypically" slavic or often scandinavia.

[quasi-dilla-deactivated20251229]

As a Chinese-American kid reading HP, Cho Chang mattered to me. The only representation of Chinese people in Western children's media at the time for me was Mulan and Ni Hao Kai Lan. It was impactful to me that the girl with the foreign name and the long dark hair was pretty and desirable, at a time when girls who looked like me were relegated to being the bland sidekick or the best friend in every other piece of media.

And yes, she has a funny name. So do Gilderoy Lockheart and Severus Snape. If you see legitimate elements of an Asian name and refer to them as "Ching Chong" you're a fucking racist.

White people, stop speaking for over us, and stop using us as an excuse for your vitriol when you don't give a shit about us otherwise.

[evenlesssentimentaltranslator]

Yeah. And to be precise, she was writing in an era when publishers didn’t detect and fix issues like that. Books get edited to hell and back for a reason, and the reason why stuff like that wasn’t edited was because publishing houses were overwhelmingly run by white men and back then it was more socially acceptable for white men to not give a shit about anyone except themselves.

[quinntheestallion]

I think by including racially diverse characters with ethnic names in a children's book, JKR was trying to prevent y'all from becoming the kind of adults who make casually racist jokes and point and laugh at real life people's names when they come from a different cultural background than you. Somehow, y'all managed to become those adults anyway while accusing her of the racism you all now openly practice with no remorse. Here is a white male openly mocking a real-life black woman's name and calling the name her black parents gave her "racist". Incredible.

[hst3000]

Being fair, though, Ebony Obsidian is about as on the nose as Remus Lupin (the werewolf who is literally named 'Wolf Wolf')

[siryouarebeingmocked]

I'm black, from a black majority country, and I knew plenty of people with worse names. I think the idea for these folks is that it's okay because JKR's a Designated Crimethinker. It's like wanting to negatively generalize about women, but you put "white" in front so it doesn't look sexist.

[gendiebrainrotreceipts]

I get the criticism for Cho Chang because it is an inaccurate name but Seamus Finnegan, padma & pavarti Patel are just….culturally accurate? And they get mad at her for it. Not to mention none of them are written as stereotypes. Or they get mad at names that are too on the nose(Remus lupin), as if pretty much all of children’s literature doesn’t do the same thing? Also it’s baffling when they use real life people as examples of cultural stereotypes that would be written by an alleged racist….when they’re real ??

[willowhearts444]

Cho Chang is not an inaccurate name, it’s a real Chinese name. It’s just uncommon. There are actual living people named Cho Chang in real life.

[quinntheestallion]

I think by including racially diverse characters with ethnic names in a children's book, JKR was trying to prevent y'all from becoming the kind of adults who make casually racist jokes and point and laugh at real life people's names when they come from a different cultural background than you. Somehow, y'all managed to become those adults anyway while accusing her of the racism you all now openly practice with no remorse. Here is a white male openly mocking a real-life black woman's name and calling the name her black parents gave her "racist". Incredible.

[mossmavka]

First of all, Ebony Obsidian is beautiful and kinda badass name.

Second of all, the Cho Chang controversy (from which this whole meme sparked from) is absolutely uneducated and kinda racist.

Even though the joke is pretty funny, the only problem with the name Cho Chang is that Cho is not a Chinese name but a Korean one if I recall correctly.

I went to school with a student named Chi Chung Wong. I had plenty of classmates with Chang, Wang, Yang and other stereotypical sounding names. (Granted they had English nicknames but I could still just look that the register to see their Chinese names)

If Cho was named more accurately (like Chi Chung) the same people would still flip their shit even though certain Chinese people do have names like this. So their criticism is at best, stupid and at worst, racist

[kanelia]

Apparently, JK Rowling has pissed off a lot of gender critical people on twitter by admitting that she has a trans woman friend she refers to with she/her pronouns because that individual is her friend and she wants to make the said person happy. I think it is so tiring how easily people fall into black and white thinking and fail to learn anything from the cult behaviour of tras. More than two things can be true at the same time: It can be wrong to force people either through law or social pressure to lie and control their speech and it is dangerous and offensive for media and researchers to report and record people's sex falsely. But when it comes to someone's personal life, they can still be free to choose to refer to someone with preferred, although inaccurate, pronouns. Just like they should be free to choose not to do this.

[shakespearenews]

Butterfly McQueen as Puck, Maxine Sullivan as Titania and Louis Armstrong as Bottom/Pyramus in the Broadway production of “Swingin’ the Dream,” a jazz musical that has been largely forgotten.

Credit: Vandamm Studio/The New York Public Library, via Museum of the City of New York

[syrenki]

everything in the world is just this

[kiefbowl]

please don't fall for anti-science conspiracy theories in the name of feminism please please please 🙏🙏🙏

[targea-caramar]

This shouldn't stay in the tags IMO, it's too good

#hearing shit like this when im actually studying sciences is so painful bro #“the sperm chemicals make women submissive” like ok name a chemical #“men are going to completely disappear very soon because the Y chromosome is shrinking” literally we are not special and it has happened to #other mammalian species that STILL have male populations regardless #also I still see people saying all embryos start out female it is embarrassing #etc etc #any bio-essentialist argument about female oppression is fucking stupid #i am literally capable of the same thoughts and feelings as any man and so are they #our behavioral differences are mostly conditioned and thinking anything less typically veers into misogyny hard

[evilrashida]

Not to be that girl but there’s really not anything revolutionary about anyone wearing make up lmao

[unwastelandunbaby]

idk I think maybe 2000s/10s feminism talked too much about “unrealistic beauty standards for women” that people forgot “beauty standards for women” is already fucked up

[zh0re]

“You’re entitled to a childfree life, not a childfree society.”

Childfree people aren’t asking for a childfree society. We want spaces within society where we can do shit in peace without hearing children causing a scene with parents who do fuck all about it. There are already adult-only resorts and cruises and clubs, so when childfree joke about wanting more, y’all flip your shit because you’re salty that you have to live with your careless decisions.

When women want our own spaces, is it logical to assume that we want a male-free society? No. We joke about it but we know better. We’re aware that there will never be such a thing, but we are entitled to our spaces away from them. So why are you assuming that type of position onto childfree people? Because you’re miserable, that’s why.